


The Saddest Song I've Got

by AngelinaVansen (catherineflowers)



Series: Beautiful Things [2]
Category: Star Trek: Voyager
Genre: Angst, F/F, Self-Doubt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-29
Updated: 2018-05-29
Packaged: 2019-05-15 09:55:51
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,124
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14788295
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/catherineflowers/pseuds/AngelinaVansen
Summary: Set about three months after the events in "A Thousand Beautiful Things" and told, this time, from Janeway's POV. You don't really need to read that one to get this one though.





	The Saddest Song I've Got

**Author's Note:**

> Written in the early 2000s.

I didn't know that Seven was capable of sleep. 

She still regenerates of course, but after we make love, she will fall asleep for a couple of hours in my bed. It surprised me at first. It seemed a little too human somehow. To watch the Borg sleep ... 

It is not like watching her regenerate, not at all. In regeneration, Seven is perfect. Unmoving, beatific. When sleeping, she is restless, unused to utter unconsciousness, unused to her dreams, unused even to lying down for long periods of time.

When she's sleeping, she mutters and tosses and often wakes with a start. 

I watch her now, here in my bed in my quarters at 3am and her eyes are moving slightly under her lids as she dreams. Her skin is pressed against my pillows. Her scent is everywhere.

I watch her and I wonder at myself. I wonder what I am doing.

I want to wake her up and hold her and tell her I love her. See the look in her eyes when I say that. Kiss her. Keep kissing her. Laugh with her and play with her soft skin and pretend ... pretend that this doesn't have to end.

Because it does. I know that it does. I've indulged myself too long with Seven of Nine. It isn't right.

I get out of bed and I don't wake her up. I don't put my clothes on. 

I go to my living space and replicate coffee. Not the best thing to drink when you can't sleep, but just the smell of it settles my mind. It helps me think. 

I stand in the half light and lick my lips slowly, tasting the taste of Seven on them, warm and buttery. Oh Seven. How much I love you. How much I shouldn't. The coffee will drown your taste off my lips. 

I look out of my windows to where my ship is heading, all the stars it is passing right now at warp.

I feel so alone sometimes in moments like these. A small naked Captain in the vastness of space. What has happened to me? 

I didn't used to be like this. I keep telling myself that. I used to be fine. I used to be a woman in love with life, eager to experience everything. Finding joy in it all. I gave my love so easily to Mark.

And to Chakotay, in a way. 

We enjoyed a fulfilling, uncomplicated relationship for quite a while, but I guess that was back when I was a fulfilled, uncomplicated woman.

Seven doesn't deserve the woman I am now. I see her struggling to understand me every day we are together. She tries hard. She thinks it is because she isn't human enough, but she doesn't know. It's not her fault. I barely understand myself.

Sometimes I cling to her, needing her desperately. I don't want to let her out of my sight. Other times, she's little more than a pest to me, bothering me with her idiotic questions and observations. I treat her badly and she thinks it's her fault.

I have to finish this relationship. I have to. I don't know why I started it and I don't know why I have allowed it to continue. It is beyond inappropriate.

I drain my coffee cup and go back to the bedroom. Seven is still sleeping. She's rolled onto her belly and lies almost covered by blankets. Her blonde hair is on my pillow and one leg emerges, white and curved. She is beautiful. Impossibly beautiful in the speeding starlight.

I sit in my bath for almost an hour, almost crying. Hands holding the rim as if I'm afraid I might drown. What am I doing? Why do I think this is the right thing to do? 

I dress in my uniform although it is early, do my hair and fasten my pips on my collar, looking at myself in the mirror. I put make-up on. I still look grey, so then I put more on. It's never enough.

I go into the bedroom to find my boots, and Seven is awake. Only just, but she pulls herself upright, screwing up her eyes and wincing at the taste in her mouth. She doesn't like herself when she's been asleep.

"What is the time?" she asks me. 

"0400," I tell her. I sit down on my chair to fasten my boots.

"Your shift does not begin for two hours," she tells me.

I shrug. "The Captain's never off duty," I say.

She seems angry, but she doesn't say anything else. Perhaps she wanted me to want to wake up with her and make love to her again this morning.

She gets up as well, and walks naked into my bathroom. 

I look at her perfection and feel guilty all over again. Look at her. Look at her. That body, that youth, that face, those breasts, those buttocks ... it's wasted on me. That silky skin I love to nuzzle with my lips. It's wasted. 

She needs so much to be human, to be one of us, to fit in on this ship and on Earth when we get there. I should be encouraging her to date Harry Kim or Lieutenant Chapman or even the Doctor. She should be having picnics and candlelit dinners and afternoons on the holodeck with them. Not dirty sex with me. 

I follow her into the bathroom after a moment and find her at the sink, washing herself down with a washcloth. Her nipples are stiff with cold and there are droplets all over her skin. Seven dislikes the shower, she always washes.

She looks at me a little too long, and I realise I am staring at her breasts. No better than a teenage boy. There are marks from my teeth on the left one.

"Meet me for lunch?" I ask her.

She nods.

"I'll come to Astrometrics when I'm done," I say.

"Yes," she replies and looks at herself in the mirror.

That's when I'll do it then. I will speak to her over lunch. Talk to her gently and personally, let her know how highly I think of her and how much I have enjoyed the last three months, but tell her that it has finished. It is over.

I leave my quarters for the bridge, thinking of the words I am going to use. I say them over and over in my head, then whisper them aloud in the turbolift. I will tell her it has become unworkable. That our relationship is a distraction to me and that as Captain I cannot afford distractions. 

No.

That's awful. I can imagine Seven's face.

It isn't true, either. I have always been very professional when it comes to my relationships, and Seven fully understands. She has been more than accommodating when it comes to my position. She, as well, has put her work first for the good of this ship. I cannot insult her by using protocol as my excuse.

Ensign Kim is surprised to see me on the bridge. Disappointed, too, that his command shift has finished an hour and a half early. But he should be used to me by now. 

I relieve him and sit down in my seat, checking the readings, listening to his report. Half listening. The other half of me still thinking of Seven.

Seven, last week, beautiful on shore leave. Seven, always the surprise. Holding my hand in the quiet of a wood we walked in. Holding my hand and not saying a word while we listened to the things we never hear on Voyager: birds and animals and trees moved by wind. Seven with strands of her hair loosened by the air, her mouth tasting of fresh water and fresh rain as we kissed in that planet paradise. 

Seven holding me close because it was cold. Caring about me. Me pulling us apart when we got back near civilization. Just in case we were seen.

Seven accepting that.

I go into my ready room to be by myself some more. Sit at my desk and don't turn my terminal on. Don't replicate any coffee. Look at my hands, gripping the edge of the desk like I am frightened I might fall through the floor. 

I think of Seven, making Seven cry, breaking Seven's heart. Making her angry and having her hating me. Seeing her every day, seeing her hating me.

Then seeing her moving on. Having to work with her not hating me and not loving me and not caring at all. Dating someone, someone wholesome and suitable and beautiful like the adoring Mr. Kim.

It is what she needs and deserves. Seven of Nine, beautiful Seven, the way she's been for me. The private Seven only I have ever seen. The smiling Seven, laughing. Abandoned Seven, passionate, eyes strong on mine and adoring my skin and loving my lips, sharing everything she is with me so easily.

I don't deserve the woman that she is becoming. 

I am a bad woman and I use her like my whore. Make her do things that should make her uncomfortable. Rely on her to be there when I'm stressed and push her away after I am sated. I can't believe her when she says that she loves me, I can't, I can't. It isn't true. She can't love me at all.

No, I can't wait till lunch. I have to do it now. I have to finish our relationship right now. I get to my feet, blood pumping hard, drumming in my ears.

I leave my Ready Room and hand the bridge to Chakotay. Tell them I'll be in Astrometrics. Fidget all the way there in the turbolift and through the corridors, not knowing the words. Full of nothing.

Inside, Tal Celes is at a console, and Seven is gazing at the view screen. A huge star map, Voyager's current course, is laid out on it. Ahead is the Rehm Nebula. Behind is the Tellaren system. Either side are systems and systems of stars. Voyager, her beautiful shape, is passing through them. Flying. A breath of air in airless space.

The lights of the map are on Seven's face. Her eyes are flicking, looking, watching. 

"Dismissed," I tell Celes.

Seven turns to me. "Captain," she says. Hands behind her back.

I shake my head slightly to indicate this isn't ship's business. 

Her posture shifts, almost imperceptibly, and the blank Borg look of her face loosens at once. Her pink mouth lifts, her blue eyes pick up.

"It is a little early for lunch," she smiles.

I look at the deck, at my boots. "I know," I say. I am silent then. The words I have waiting in my mouth taste foul. 

"Allow me to finish up," she says, idiosyncratically. The human and the Borg, 

She moves to a console, shutting down her work quickly. The screen, the view of Voyager's past and future, turns off.

She moves about the room, moving efficiently. Her hands, white and silver, on those flat bright buttons. Inputting and interfacing. The line of her spine in her back in her biosuit, the curve of her neck and that perfect pleat of her hair. Not a strand falling out.

Checking Celes' work. Finishing it. Updating it. Uploading it to Voyager's core for review. Setting up a diagnostic. Writing a report. A log, and a personal log too, all in that stark sharp Borg language that's only numbers. Nothing more.

I can't help it then. I start to love her painfully. Seven, my Seven.

I think of her the way I first saw her, in that cube. She spoke for the Borg and she scared me to death. Living with her, working with her those short hours on that cube were such a knife-edge. We'll see how brave you are, Kathryn Janeway. 

I think of the way she looked, all lips and eyes, all white and veins and so full of contempt. She spoke for the Borg. There was something exciting about that. 

It's there even now. The haughty lift of her chin, the ice of her eyes. Like she's looked your gods right in the eye. Found them wanting.

I love it, I can't deny that I love it. It feels powerful, being loved so unconditionally by a woman like that.

She finishes her work and turns to me, expectantly. Lips and legs slightly apart.

Oh, Seven I can't do this right now with so much love in my stomach. Later then. Later. Later I will finish this.

Two steps toward her and she is mine. In my arms, head dipped to my head, mouth open on my mouth. Seven of Nine, her breath hot on my tongue and her tongue wet and smooth and precise.

I am lost and I don't know what I am doing.

She feels perfect against me. Perfection that's mine to destroy, to touch, to grope, to rip open and squeeze. I hear nothing but my own pulse of want, think of nothing but the way I'm feeling. Her body feels good against my body and that's all I care about. 

I break away gasping, hot, needy. Not the Captain.

"Let's go to my quarters," I pant. I want her so much it sickens me. How dare I?

But I don't stop. I am all over her in the turbolift, panting like a desperate whore. Pawing at her perfection like a dog. Lapping at her neck just to get the taste of her skin, her wonderful fresh skin. I suck until I leave a mark and my lipstick is staining her collar.

I catch sight of myself in the mirror as we go back into my quarters, and I'm terrible. Eyes horrifying and wide, skin livid with arousal. How can this beautiful woman want me?

She's cupping my face in her hands, looking at me as if I am the most precious diamond. How can she? I'm not the woman I used to be. Not half the woman.

I cling to her. Clutch at her with the sharp points of my fingernails digging into her skin. Pulling her into my bed, scratching at her. I grab one of her hands and shove it between my own legs. Force her to burrow into my pants and underwear. Make her touch me, stroke me, arouse me. 

I bounce my hips against her hand, speeding up, wheezing and gasping as it builds and builds.

It's barely pleasure when I come. Just release. Relief, like a good sneeze. I cry out because I should, not because I have to. I collapse against the mattress, breathing hard, full of heat and moving blood.

There is something deeply wrong with me.

I can't look at Seven, so I don't. I get off the bed and strip naked quickly, not watching her watching me. Not watching her touching herself as she does.

Why does my body arouse her? How little she understands about humanity. She doesn't know that this will destroy her.

She pulls herself out of her biosuit and spreads her legs for my mouth. I am greedy and I take her. Licking that hot butter taste across my lips and my tongue, making her sigh in soft contentment.

Take this, Seven. It's my lust. It's my greed and my shame. It's my betrayal of you. It's everything I can never give my crew.

Her sighs grow to moans and her soft languid body to a tense white arch. I know Seven's body, it's just like my ship. Beautiful lines. Grace and power. Biological and technological. Mine to command. My tongue talks to her body and my lips set its course. Seven is at warp.

She comes down from her orgasm with her mouth open and panting. Her glossy lips quivering a little. Wanting to speak, and to say it, and to say it to me.

She can't though. "Thank you Kathryn," she says instead, her voice barely there.

"Any time," I mumble against her belly. Trying to be cute when I'm a snake.

She sits up then, pulling at her disarranged hair and looking for her clothes. I take hold of her wrist, her sex-warm skin, and pull her back to me. Serious.

"Don't go," I say. "Not yet."

She smiles that funny small smile of hers. "We are both on duty," she reminds me.

"Fuck duty," I say, which raises one of her eyebrows. "I'm the Captain."

I pull her against me, holding her possessively, pressing her back to the mattress and putting my head on her breasts like a baby. A pathetic needy baby.

It's time to end this. I have to. I don't like myself when I'm with Seven. Being her lover was not what I had in mind when I liberated her from the Collective. I wouldn't want anyone to think that. 

Her skin is so soft though. Soft and fresh and warm. I rest my head for just a minute, kiss her. Kiss her again. 

She puts her hands, ever so delicately, into my hair. Strokes it and plays a little absently with the strands that catch in her fingers. It feels lovely.

Christ I'm weak. What am I doing? I should be doing it now, talking to her gently in the quiet of my bedroom, making her see, helping her to understand. I should be being her mentor, her Captain, her friend. I should be making this end.

Instead I'm thinking about doing it all again this evening. Dinner and drinks. Maybe a little holodeck time. 

Mmm, yes. Velocity. Velocity to make her angry, to fill her full of fire so she pins me to the bed and bites me and doesn't stop biting me, until she leaves a little blood welling in each aching crescent.

Later she will say she's sorry, but I won't be. I will like it. Hell, I won't even heal them. I'll let them sting the whole next day and think of her teeth hurting me and loving me. There's something very wrong with me.

"Kathryn?" she says, waking me a little.

"Mmm?" I murmur against her breast.

"I should return to Astrometrics," she tells me. "I cannot leave Tal alone indefinitely."

She is right. I too have left my post and should be getting back. If there was a red alert right now ...

I pull myself away from her kitten-soft embrace, picking up my clothes and dressing. I catch Seven watching me, looking at me naked as if analysing me. It's a trait of hers I hate. 

"What?" I say when she doesn't break her gaze. 

She smiles a little. "I am admiring the shape of your body," she tells me in her soft precise voice.

I smile back at her, and like it as she runs soft fingers over the bare skin of my back. Her touch is like sunshine in this place where I haven't felt sunshine in years.

Then she goes back to dressing, puts on her shoes, and leaves.

I go as well, go back to the bridge and sit in my chair beside Chakotay, smelling of Seven. Lunch time comes and goes, and I do not call her. Part of me waits for her to call me, but she doesn't. That allows me to get angry with her and not feel guilty. Allows me to sit in my Ready Room for most of the afternoon doing nothing.

At 1700, Seven arrives with her daily reports. I notice there is nothing unusual about them and file them. All systems operating within normal parameters. How very tedious.

"Do you have plans for the evening, Captain?" she asks at 1701. Late enough that I am officially off duty. 

I don't answer for a moment. I play with my computer terminal, pretend to wrinkle my brow at something on the screen. Then I sigh.

"Not really," I have to admit. "And you?"

"No," she says.

There is a long silence between us. She waits without moving a muscle, not tense, but not exactly at ease either. I know what she is thinking. She is wondering if she has made a mistake. If she has broken one of my thousand little protocols about what constitutes fraternisation on duty. If she has overstepped my bounds.

She is wondering if it is too soon since our last encounter, that she is smothering me. She is wondering if I am angry because she didn't come to me at lunch. 

Poor Seven. Poor Seven, none of this is your fault. I am not the best example of humanity. You really shouldn't be trying to keep up with me.

"Dismissed," I say, without looking up from my screen.

She turns to leave.

"I'll come and see you," I say then. "Soon. Let me ... I'll come to the cargo bay, we can make plans for the evening."

A smile, and a little smile from her. So pretty on that full mouth.

She leaves and I clench my toes in my boots, trying to wake myself up. Wanting to focus, thinking again of what I am going to say to her to end this. All I can think about is her face, that little smile. Of cradling her chin gently in my palms, of bringing that soft mouth to mine.

Later, I spend ages getting ready to meet her. Trying on everything in my wardrobe. Replicating things. Picking the right scent and the right hairstyle. Exactly the right shade of lipstick.

It doesn't matter, I know it doesn't matter. I am only doing it to delay myself. As if Seven gives a damn about the clothes I wear. As if she notices where my hair is parted.

After putting on my eighth pair of shoes, I call her.

"Janeway to Seven of Nine," I say as flatly as I can. Just in case she has company.

"Seven here," she says a moment later. The warmth in her voice lets me know she is alone.

"Would you care to join me on holodeck one?" I ask.

"Yes," she replies at once. "Do you intend to play Velocity?"

"No ... no, not tonight, I'm not really in the mood," I tell her. "I just ... I need to talk to you."

Silence from Seven of Nine. A sudden silence.

"Can you meet me there in fifteen minutes?" I ask her.

"Acknowledged," she says coldly. Icily. With the voice of the Borg.

She knows. She knows me well enough to know. Oh God.

A cold sweat starts on my back. I don't want to do this. Oh God I don't want to. This is going to be horrible. I don't want to do this but I have to.

I go to holodeck one, and it's in use. Crewman Gorman is windsurfing and he isn't happy at being thrown out, not even by the Captain. The leisure time of my crew's so precious. I'll try and make it up to him.

He leaves and I go in. The doors shut behind me and I stand and think. What program should I load? What setting is the right one? Where can I do this? This isn't easy. 

Mentally, I thumb through the catalogue of programs I have stored. Forests, beaches, cabins. Deserts, snowscapes. Exotic worlds. Towns near my home. Places that are special to me, places that are probably special to Seven. Places we've been to together.

None of them are right. I am still staring at the blank grey grid when she comes in, dressed in a different biosuit, he brown one.

She looks sulky. Sullen jaw and pouty lips. Smouldering eyes. Ready for a fight.

"Computer, open a star map of Voyager's current position," I say. 

There it is. All around us, spreading out in every direction: the vastness of space, the hugeness, the nothingness. No Voyager, either, just Seven and me standing where my ship would be flying. Where she is flying right now.

Seven looks beautiful in the non-light from the holographic stars. White and flawless. Black shadows around her lips and implants. Hair the colour of no colour at all. So beautiful. So young. So young I see the girl, the child from the photographs I found the first day she was here.

Annika Hansen. One of her eyes still human and soft, one of her eyes perfect and Borg.

I step closer to her and hold the side of her body against the side of my body. I put my arms around her waist. My head on her breasts.

What am I doing? Exactly the same as I did this morning. Not telling her. Not talking to her. Holding her. Letting her hold me. Letting her dip her head to my lips and catch them with her lips, her full fat lips. Glide her tongue over mine, mix her cream with my coffee.

Forever ... oh ... forever Seven. Forever in this journey, in this space.

Looking up into her eyes, I see her as my bride, I see her as the mother of my child. I want to cry. 

I can't do this. I can't live my life this way, I can't command my starship and hold myself and Seven together. I have to do this. End this. Be strong, Janeway. Always choose the hard path. This is what you know.

I take her hands, the silver and the flesh. One tear spills from my eye and moves down my face, hot and fat. More are on my lashes. I step away from her. Breaths of moving space slip between us. Voyager's current course, and ours. 

Seven's mouth trembles. I see her teeth between her lips. The crease of her brow on her baby-powder skin. 

I fall to my knees in front of her, like my knees have just given way. Like I can't stand. But I'm the Captain and nothing brings me to my knees. 

Space beneath me catches me and as always we are moving on at warp.

Still clinging hard to Seven's hands, mouth open, gasping air through tears, through a thick throat.

"Seven ... I ... Annika ..." I hear myself say, and it's not a pretty sound.

"Seven," she corrects me.

"Seven, will you marry me?"

Silence. Oh God, silence. Shock. From her, from me. 

"Kathryn?" she says.

And I'm repeating it. "Seven, will you be my wife?" I ask.

And then the tears do come. Hitting me so hard from the back of my throat I'm bent double, sobbing. Aching. Wracked. Still clinging to her fingers.

"I love you," I tell her as I'm weeping. "I love you so much ..."

And I do, and everything makes sense. Everything. Our past, the course behind us and everything we did there. Our future, all the places that we haven't been together. The way home. Perhaps I really have gone insane.

I can't believe I said it and yet I don't ever want to take it back. I've never felt so naked, so dependent in my life.

My life. My life. My life for her, for Seven of Nine.

She kneels down with me in the starfield and wraps her arms around me tightly once again. Brings my head to her shoulder and lets me cry against the gentle glitter of her biosuit.

"I love you too," she tells me softly, with intensity. "I hope you have never doubted that."

I cannot reply. I cannot speak. I just look at her, at the curves and flesh and metal of her face. The sky in her eyes, wide as the Earth. My eyes cry. So much to release. So much to share with her. Such a lot to open up.

Seven will be one with me, won't she. Seven has lived the whole of her life connected at the mind to billions. Joined, sharing the minutia. There is nothing of mine she will be afraid to hear. Nothing she will turn away from. I've been so stupid.

She is holding me close, her soft lips drifting and trailing and kissing. I bury my own lips in her neck and kiss at her ticking pulse. Each beat another second of our future.

"Well?" I ask when I have my breath and my voice. "What do you think?"

She is smiling fully now, her white teeth straight and perfect and pretty. "I think," she says, "it will be difficult to keep our marriage secret from the crew."

She is laughing, teasing, but there is a little sadness there, a little hurt. Immediately I feel a surge of guilt. I have been so impossible, I know. So awfully complicated. 

"We won't," I swear to her. "No secrets. None, I promise."

I think of it. Of inviting Chakotay to dinner tomorrow night and having Seven sit in with us. Sharing our meal. Sharing my quarters, coming home to her.

I think of the birthday party Neelix is arranging for the Delaneys on the holodeck. Going with Seven of Nine. Dancing with her, sharing a drink. Leaning with my head on her shoulder as it gets late. Accepting the arm she slips round my waist, taking the support it offers.

I imagine our wedding, a summer's day on a lush, uninhabited world. Surrounded by our friends and colleagues on the holodeck. Or in the ornate temple of some undiscovered Delta Quadrant civilisation. All those things lie on our path. On our course. We can find anything we want.

"Yes Kathryn," she says in a small voice, bright as a bell. "You know that I would love to marry you and be your wife."

I throw my arms around her, squeeze her hard against me, bursting with things I have never felt before. So many things, things I never felt when Justin proposed to me, or when I proposed to Mark. Seven ... Seven ... I kiss her and hug her and cry with release.

This feels so right. I've been so crazy. 

I imagine our lives together, our lives on this ship. Our lives when we get home. Introducing Seven to my family, bringing her to my house. Tracking down members of her family and finding out about her roots. Both of us growing and changing together.

She takes my hand and neither of us can speak. I see her mouth is trembling and her eyes are wet. She kisses me deeply.

I will get us home. I will. I swear it. But this is our destiny, this journey together on this beautiful ship of mine. Each course I plot will be a step of our lives.

Some day the sun will rise and we will make love on our home planet, but for now we will move on through space, the way we always have on Voyager.


End file.
